Imagine for a moment, you're Todd Gurley. You spend your entire life playing football, and you're dominant. Four-star prospect coming out of high school, state champion, recruited by the University of Georgia. After three years in Athens, you depart the program second on the school's all-time list in both rushing yards and touchdowns. Despite an ACL tear near the end of your Junior season, you're selected with the 10th overall pick in the NFL Draft by the then-St. Louis Rams. You win Rookie of the Year. In your third season, you win Offensive Player of the Year. And after year six, you're out of the NFL.
Yet still, after all of that heartbreak, Todd Gurley mustered up the courage to be in the building when just a little over a year after taking his final snap in an NFL game, the Los Angeles Rams won Super Bowl LVI inside of their home stadium in February 2022.
“I went to the game. I went to the game dawg,” Gurley shared on a recent episode of the 25/10 Show. I threw my Rams s*** on. Had my white, blue, and yellow. I ain’t know how I was going to feel going, but then I went and I was more happy for really AD (Aaron Donald), and then obviously like Von (Miller), and you know Odell (Beckham Jr.) got his first championship.”
Though Todd Gurley will never get his own Super Bowl ring, he did get to play on the biggest stage in sports one time in his career. In Super Bowl LIII, Gurley rushed the ball 10 times for 35 yards in a 13-3 loss to the New England Patriots, who won their sixth Super Bowl title. But even though the Rams fell short when he was there, there's no bitterness when Gurley talks about watching his former team win a Super Bowl.
“I would’ve definitely been happy to have one but I went to the game and I enjoyed myself. I stayed too, you know like seeing them on the field, playing with their family. I ain’t going to lie, I was low key happy for like the organization, the trainers and stuff like that, my old teammates and stuff like that.”
This isn't a story that'a altogether unique to Todd Gurley, but the former Los Angeles Rams star is one of the many casualties of an injury-plagued career, and given the timeframe in which Gurley played in the league, of the diminished value of running backs in the NFL. In fact, last summer, Melvin Gordon — another running back who didn't have the lengthy career he probably imagined he would — pinned the blame squarely on the shoulders of Sean McVay, who coached Gurley during his final three seasons with the Rams and later said he would never pay big money to a running back again. Perhaps it's just coincidence, but you'll notice that Gurley didn't once mention McVay or the Rams coaching staff when talking about who he was “low key happy for.”
Todd Gurley's fleeting (and dominant) Rams career
Although Todd Gurley played only five seasons with the Rams, his production is that of a much longer tenured star. Consider, Gurley won Rookie of the Year in 2015, Offensive Player of the Year in 2017, was named an All-Pro three times, was twice ranked in the NFL's annual Top 100 list, and finished as runner up to Tom Brady in the 2017 MVP voting after becoming just the eighth running back in NFL history to finish a season with at least 1,300 rushing yards and 750 receiving yards.
In five years with the Rams, Gurley rushed for 5,404 yards, hauled in another 2,090 receiving yards, and scored 70 touchdowns from scrimmage. And had he never played a snap for the Atlanta Falcons, his per game rushing average would've been one of the thirty best in league history, ahead of Hall of Fame backs like Tony Dorsett, Franco Harris, Jerome Bettis, Marshall Faulk, and Thurman Thomas. s Angeles Rams, Todd Gurley was happy to see his teammates win a ring in 2022
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